According to a 2017 survey, about 200 million people A worldwide practice yoga. Yoga studios can be found and journals on and meditation almost every city; popular books and yoga can be found in every major bookshop; yoga is taught in hospitals, schools and even prisons. Yoga has been embraced by people from all walks of life, of all age groups -yoga, it seems, is taking the world by storm!

The origins of yoga go back to the timeless wisdom found within the Vedic literature. The Upanishads define yoga as “the firm restraint of the senses" and the process by which one "transcends the state of material conditioning." As most serious practitioners of yoga know, the Sanskrit word yoga is derived from the root yuj, meaning to unite or harmonise the individual consciousness with the Supreme Consciousness. The true goal of yoga is the cessation of undesirable mental activities so that one becomes self-realized and situated in a state of transcendence (samadhi). Thus, yoga is the system by which one attains self-realization and realization of the Supreme.

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